Reputation Capital

Podcast Transcription

Dave: I was always told I have a face for radio, so... That's awesome.

Melina: I get it now.

Narrator: Welcome to "Flippin Off". A purpose-driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference.

Dave: All right. Dave Boswell here with my wife Melina.

Melina: Hey.

Dave: We are excited today. This is...we're coming up toward the end of the year and we've just been, kind of, reminiscing and going through all kinds of stuff and at the same time, closing a lot of deals right now, honey. It is...

Melina: I know.

Dave: Gosh there's so much. And in the last couple of days, we've had several deals happen and that actually prompted this conversation. And then we said we wanna go take that and give everybody a podcast today. And in the studio, you've heard from Mr. Tim Wilkinson sometime in the past and Oscar Solaris, well, today we're privileged to have both Oscar and Tim here with us. And so, welcome guys.

Oscar: Yay guys.

Tim: Thank you. Thank you. Welcome.

Oscar: Good to be here.

Melina: One is a sir and one is a mister.

Dave: A sir and a mister?

Melina: Mm-hmm. Oscar is sir.

Oscar: God, it sounds like I've been knighted.

Melina: Well, it just means you're older.

Oscar: Oh, wow. Oh, boy.

Dave: You're old.

Oscar: I'll go with knighted. That's good. Knighted is good.

Dave: Well, so in the past, we've kind of talked about Tim's journey and Oscar's journey, and so forth and the other day we were at the club and we were having a meeting and it was really exciting. I mean, I know for us, Lin and I, spent most of the evening talking about, you know, we were passing out, you know, all these different deals that were happening and people were getting checks and some students giving their first checks and some getting multiple checks and just really cool or even John Slater giving Mike Venice his first check, you know, the...

Melina: That was one of the coolest things I've ever seen, you know, because I always joke how, you know, I love seeing the student become the coach.

Dave: Right.

Melina: And so, I've been able to see...and as so, I always call all of my students that have turned into coaches, like my children, and then my children have grandchildren and then when the grandchildren have children, I'm like a great grandmother, which is very cool. But this time what I saw was the grandchild giving the child a check. That was amazing.

Dave: It was pretty cool. So, yeah, for John to give Mike a check when Mike's closed so many deals with John and helping John, and then now John's wholesaling a deal to...or Mike is wholesaling a deal to John and John paying him, that was...it was awesome. So...

Melina: Completely awesome.

Dave: This podcast we really wanna hone in on...The deals are awesome, I don't wanna get caught up in the details of all the deals, what I really wanna do on this is, I think a really good focal point that we're getting really clear on is the collaboration and the resources that we have inside the club. And I know we're guilty of this and, you know, kind of taking those things for granted, that there's always somebody with an answer somewhere to get these things done and there's just so many examples of that. And Oscar and Tim being here today, we wanna, kind of, talk about, you know, the whole idea of partnership and, you know, why you two...why did you two come together? You know, you were, kind of, doing your own things and, you know, Oscar's been here longer than Tim, and I, kind of, wanted to let the audience here today, you know, what are you in to Oscars? Six years? Seven years? Eight years? What is...?

Oscar: Seven-ish.

Dave: Seven-ish. And Tim?

Tim: Six-ish.

Dave: Six-ish, so somewhere in that ballpark now and...

Melina: Does that mean forty-ish ish?

Dave: No. There's an ish in there somewhere, so there's several ishes. So with that, we recently closed this transaction that involved multiple students, multiple resources, and all that stuff and we'll get to that in a few, but maybe you guys can kind of share with us because I don't really know how you two decided, like, what prompted you to come together? I mean, you know, Tim is very creative, engineery, spread sheet kind of guy, you know, and Oscar...

Melina: Is too.

Dave: You are as well. So what caused you two to come together? Usually, we see opposites. You know, strengths and weaknesses and both of you guys, I look at you and go, you're both...your strengths are the same and, you know, I know you're putting together different things and partnerships and so forth, so maybe you guys can, kind of, elaborate on that. We'll start with you, Oscar.

Melina: Sir.

Oscar: Did you just pass the buck to him? Wow.

Dave: I did.

Oscar: Pointing at me, wow. You know, for me when I when I started out in this business, and we talked about it before, that I was very focused on doing my own thing. And I had the opportunity to hang out with Tim quite a bit, way back, and there were struggles, right? Because as you can imagine being engineery, you do things a certain way and he does things a certain way, so it was an interesting dynamic but it didn't feel right at the time. And most important of those, I was doing my own thing. It was that challenge of, I've got this, right? My MO, right? I've got it. I've got it under control. I can take care of this.

Dave: The former marine coming into you. All that good stuff.

Oscar: Well, I mean, the Marine Corps side of things is what really helps me understand the team side of things.

Dave: Okay.

Oscar: Right? Because of that background, because it's always about the team. So it really reached a point here in the last...What do you say, Tim? Five months?

Tim: Roughly.

Oscar: Roughly.

Tim: Roughly five or six months.

Oscar: Where we started talking about, how do we work together again?

Dave: Okay.

Oscar: How do we come together? And we've done some deals together before, and it reached a point now where I'm clear as day that there's no way I'm ever gonna continue to do this by myself. It's just...In order to get to that next level, to get to that next...

Tim: Level is probably the best word.

Oscar: Space.

Tim: Yeah.

Oscar: Space of being able to help even more people, I guess is the other side of it too. Then it really becomes necessary for me to work with the right people. And for me Tim, we work really really well together. And I agree with you that there's a lot of similarities between us?

Dave: Yeah.

Oscar: But I think there's also a lot of different things that we bring to the table that really help us become very solid together.

Melina: Complement each other.

Oscar: There you go.

Dave: Okay.

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: All right. So if we look back at, like, each of your journeys, I've seen you go through peaks and valleys and peaks and valleys and peaks and valleys like anyone else, you know, kind of, in this business, so at some point you recognized that "Hey, I wanna try to maybe flatten some of those peaks and valleys," and you thought, "If I could do that with the collaboration of Tim, that might help level that playing field," just a little bit for you. Is that...

Oscar: Yeah. That's fair to say. It really became a matter of, how do you sustain this? Right? With...and reduce the depth of the valleys.

Dave: Got it. Right.

Oscar: And to do that, you need to have somebody who honestly does have some similarities in you because that's what's gonna contain that...maintain that level, and at the same time fill some of the gaps.

Dave: Okay. What would you add to that, Tim?

Tim: I agree with everything he said. I mean, he talked about, you know, we both have known each other for many years now. You know, for a minimum of five and a half to almost six years, I've known Oscar. And when we first got started...when I first started in this business, he...I really look up to Oscar, and, I guess, I counted him as, like, a huge mentor for me. He was somebody who I aspired to be and I watched him...I literally watched Oscar running...I don't know something like eight or ten rehabs at one time, you know, and I watched him, essentially, run ragged. I watched him be very stressed out at times and I just...And at that time, I just really wanted to plug in and really help Oscar out. I knew that there were things that I could bring to the table to help relieve some of that stress for him. And at the same time, I mean, there was a selfish part to it as well because at the time I, you know, I saw an opportunity for myself to, you know, get involved in things that I wasn't involved in, you know.

So when we got down to it, again at the time it didn't make sense and things just didn't work out, but now when I look to do things I'm...Over the last couple of years now, I've built myself up to a point where frankly my pipeline got full and I started seeing in myself the things that I had witnessed in Oscar. Like, started to get really overwhelmed and be doing way too many things. And frankly, you know, we're inside of this club and I started seeing that the people that I was working with, the club members that I was working with, weren't getting the responses the way that I felt like they should be. Not from me, because I was too caught up in other things and, you know, that's why Oscar and I came together with the idea that between the two of us we can manage multiple things and between the two of us we can really pour into students more, because if a student can't get in touch with me right away, they can get in touch with Oscar and vice versa.

And so that's really where, from my perspective, where the partnership started being formed. And to me that's the strength that Oscar and I bring together is we, you know, on the other hand, he's done a lot of rehabs. I, on the other hand, I have no desire to run a crew or swing a hammer. I don't wanna do that. I really enjoy the structuring of the deal and we bring that together and we really, like he said, we really work well together.

Dave: Yeah, that's great. I'm even thinking about how that's applied to our own life, you know.

Melina: I was thinking the same thing.

Dave: Yeah.

Melina: Two leaders.

Dave: Right.

Melina: Coming together as a partnership and on the face of it, you think, "Wow, how can two leaders, like, be in partnership together?" And then as Tim was speaking as I was thinking, "Oh, well that's you and me."

Dave: Yeah.

Melina: You know.

Dave: And the things that...one of the things that Tim just said on for, like, the deal we're working on right now. That we're putting in, you know, we're taking subject 2, with seller financing, and there's, you know, there's a trust involved and an LLC involved and all this stuff, and yeah, I can work through all that stuff. And just the other day we, you know, we joint-ventured with Tim and John in getting a deal done that ultimately we could have done ourselves, and ultimately...But it made more sense to have us use Tim's strength in the creative, paperwork, engineery, let's get this stuff done rather than take more time and then give up equity in that deal to create a win win win win all the way round.

Melina: Right.

Dave: So yeah that...Awesome.

Melina: You forgot to mention that there was a deceased owner on title.

Dave: Yeah, that too. These things happen.

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: So without getting into all that stuff, what I do wanna for the sake of time and so forth, looking at, you know, what are...if I'm listening to this podcast, what I want people to take away from it? That's...and a really big thing that so many people, when they come to the club, I don't think they recognize it right away. They'll say things like, "Well, I wanna network."

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: You know, like, "I wanna network," And then...

Dave: Yeah. It's like, "Okay. You wanna network with what and who and..."

Melina: Why?

Dave: Why? Right. And oftentimes, they think of networking as though, "I'm gonna just, kinda, I'm gonna go in with a random group of people and somehow randomness is gonna come out with, some sort of, game plan or something," and that just doesn't work.

Melina: No.

Dave: Right? So as we've developed the club over time and these relationships, and partnerships and, you know, companies and people running their own companies and having their own stuff, there's a common theme throughout every single one of them, right?

Melina: Yes.

Dave: Anyone who has success inside of our club and our model has collaboration with other people. They've added some experience or expertise to that, right? I don't have one example unless you can think of one, honey, that...one example of two people who came in with no experience, zero experience, they partnered up and they've had success.

Melina: No. I can't think of that. You know, what's interesting is, as I was listening to them think...What are you laughing at?

Tim: I'm laughing because I remember when I first got started that...I looked up to somebody like Oscar.

Melina: Yeah.

Tim: I looked up to you guys and I wanted to partner, but there was a part of me that, like, I didn't...I never reached out to Oscar to partner with him. I always partnered with other people that didn't really...they knew the same as me.

Melina: Right.

Tim: And I think it was comfortability. It was a...

Melina: Yes.

Tim: Being around people that I felt comfortable with as opposed to being in the same room with somebody like Oscar and feeling inadequate.

Melina: Yeah.

Tim: So I think that I like to...And I struggled. I struggled because I was partnering with people that knew as much, if not less, than me. And I really struggled there. And it wasn't until I got past that and decided, you know what? I can bring a little value to somebody else and frankly I think the biggest part was realizing that somebody like Oscar, somebody like you guys, were willing to work with me even though I was inadequate, to be truthful. I mean, at the time I didn't know enough. I had never done anything. I didn't bring money to the table. I brought nothing. And to really grasp that other people inside the club were willing to work with me even though I was truly inadequate, it took a while to get to that point. And then when I did that, that's when concentration...

Melina: Yeah. That's when your big MO caught up in your life, and that's where you're living right now. It is totally in...

Dave: Big MO. Momentum.

Melina: Momentum.

Dave: Yeah, momentum was, kind of, snowballed in. And I think that's really... Maybe, that's an important point, right? It's that that's exactly what the club was built off of, was the idea that we need to create leverage but leverage that worked and that, you know, what do we want from people? And we get, you know, all the time, why do people come to the club? Well, they come there because they're looking for, you know, the first thing they think they're looking for is, you know, education or information, right? And they think that somehow...and, you know, I have a saying that says, "If you're just looking for information, just sit on Google."

Melina: Right.

Dave: I mean, there's nothing new under the sun. We have no secret sauce when it comes to information, you know, Google knows everything.

Melina: Right.

Dave: So then you just have to decipher what that is, because who knows who's writing what, where, on the internet, right? So then people come and they say, "Well, I want the resources," typically, they say things like, "Well, I don't have any money, so I need money to close the deal." And they say it all the time. The money is the easy part of this. I mean...

Melina: Totally.

Dave: You know, it's easy to attract money, and find money, and deal with hard money lenders or people who have money to fund deals because people with money wanna make more money. So...and then I think as they evolve, right? And they figure out, "Okay, so information, it's there. Okay, money is there, so what about all the other things that go into closing deals?" Right? There's people behind all these deals. And so people skills and communication and those types of things that people kinda neglect a lot of times. They think they can just, kind of, "Well, if you have money then I can close the deal," and nothing could be further from the truth, right?

Melina: Boy, isn't that the truth.

Dave: So a really great example just happened, literally just, played out this just a couple of days ago where we were sitting there celebrating the success of closing this deal over in Realto, and that's just an awesome, awesome, awesome example of what it really looks like to collaborate, bring the resources. Because I'll tell you right now, this particular deal, we'll talk...we'll get into the nuts and bolts of it in just a second, but I couldn't close it by myself, right? I think maybe you could have closed it by yourself, honey because you're the smartest one around. But otherwise, there's no one else I know that could have got that deal done. And at the end of the day, you wouldn't have found the deal.

Dave: I mean, that deal... What did we decide? Oscar, you guys worked on that for how long?

Oscar: It took about a year to locate the owner or the owners' family.

Dave: Wow.

Oscar: And then some contract to close about seven months, so we're talking about 19 months.

Melina: It was a vacant property, so that's key.

Dave: So nineteen months? Nineteen months, and not... Let me just give a quick shout to Adrienne. At some point, she'll be listening to this along with her partner, Richelle. And I'm right on the verge of coughing so I'm gonna cough it out in advance because it's coming any second.

Oscar: We hear it.

Melina: And there it is.

Dave: And there it is. So...

Melina: Your frog barrier.

Dave: Yeah. It's good old weather and allergies. It's fantastic. So, nonetheless, so Adrienne and Richelle, they're out and they're looking at that NODs and they're having conversations with the homeowners, they come across a vacant house. And it's vacant, semi-run down for the most part. It's clear. It's vacant, and so Adrienne starts to try to locate the homeowner, right?

Melina: Correct.

Oscar: Right.

Dave: And she does that on her own, is that?

Oscar: She did for the most part.

Dave: You, kind of, gave her the...

Oscar: She... Well, yeah, and she brought that to training sessions at the club a few times over the course of the year. Is I'm still struggling with it, I'm still having a problem with it, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? So yeah, there are some coaching that took place throughout the year, but I got to give her credit. I mean, she's really grasped what's taught and the tenacity she brings to it is awesome because she honestly, I mean, I'm good at finding people but I was like, "I'm done." It's not, you know, it just wasn't worth my, at the time, it wasn't worth my time to dedicate so much to it.

Melina: Right.

Dave: To keep trying to locate the homeowner.

Oscar: But we continued to encourage her, and she did it.

Dave: And what a phenomenal opportunity. Not only for everybody that got involved and ultimately closed the deal, but the family behind this transaction is really really awesome. So they find...Adrienne does her thing, she finds...locates the homeowner, finally gets down to it...and it's mom, that is the owner of the house, is that correct?

Oscar: Grandma. Grandma is the owner. Yeah.

Dave: So grandma is the owner of the house, and grandma is in an assisted living facility with...

Oscar: She's actually...she had been in and out of the assisted living facility and when we found her, she's living with the granddaughter.

Dave: Got it. So she's living with the granddaughter and she has dementia, Alzheimer's?

Oscar: Yup. Right.

Dave: Right. So granddaughter is taking care of the affairs.

Oscar: Absolutely. All the financial affairs, medical care, all that.

Dave: And the house is paid for and they're running out of money to continue taking care of her and they don't know how to get the house sold, essentially.

Melina: Correct.

Dave: Right?

Melina: Exactly. And meanwhile, the house is deteriorating because it's sitting vacant. So the more it deteriorates, the less value it has. So it's just like, you know, throwing money out the window.

Dave: Right. Right. Every month. And then on top of that, you know, people had broken into it and...

Oscar: Code violations or some kind of stuff going on.

Dave: Yeah, the code violations. Those stacked up really quickly. Yeah. So Adrienne comes to you and says, "Help, Oscar."

Oscar: Yup. And said we located her, so I got a big smile and, "Look at that. That's awesome." And then engaged me to have a conversation with the granddaughter.

Dave: Okay.

Oscar: And it kind of went from there.

Dave: So you educate the granddaughter, we kind of...that's when you ended up with some title issues.

Oscar: Yup. Made an offer, I got on a contract within days of meeting her and then opened up escrow, life is good, we can get out of this thing pretty quick, and not so much. So that's when the title issues came up. So immediately for me, it's like, "Okay. Who do I know that knows title well enough to be able to help me with it? Who do I know that can put forth the amount of effort and really deliver on this?" Right? Because I know I couldn't do it.

Dave: Got it.

Oscar: So immediately it's like, "Okay. So I need to talk to Dave and Melina. Let me go reach out to them." So connected with Melina and shared the whole story behind it and she rolled up her sleeves and that's was she does.

Dave: And so Melina starts working on the title issue, and we're not getting into the crazy nuts and bolts, we could talk for hours on all the different facets that went on in that, but we ran our heads into the wall. I hope...

Melina: Several times.

Dave: Countless times, right?

Melina: Yes. So meanwhile I'm going over there looking at this house going, "Okay, so we're gonna potentially fix and flip this house and bring it to market, and we're watching the market as this is happening," and the house, you know, a significant amount of work. And so the effort for the amount of work that was in there, we started looking at going, "Well, who do we know? Who's in our resources that we could call that would wanna take this house on and potentially could we just wholesale it to them? And if we can figure out the title stuff." And meanwhile, it's got thirty-some thousand dollars and...

Oscar: $33,000.

Dave: $33,000 in liens from code enforcement on it, for everything. From taking care of the yard to the house got broken into and they boarded it up, and the liens and fines just piled up. Trash liens, all sorts of different things. Franchise Tax Board.

Oscar: Franchise tax, yeah.

Dave: Lots and lots of liens happening on this property as well, so if we can get rid of these liens and get this property under the contract amount and then ultimately the liens were gonna be paid for by the family. Right?

Oscar: Correct. That was coming out of their proceeds from the deal.

Dave: So if we can somehow help them reduce those liens, we're not putting more money in our pocket, we're actually putting money in their pocket. So everybody is really clear about that. Also, we got a contract for this contractor price of $115,000?

Melina: Yes.

Oscar: Right:

Melina: So $115,000, and all liens will be paid out of that $115,000.

Oscar: Correct. So you could have just said, "Hey, sorry there's $30,000 in liens and there's your Franchise Tax Board and there's your trash liens and all that stuff," and instead you said, "Well, I'm gonna do everything I can to reduce those liens." And on top of it Melina's working with title to work on the title issues that are happening in there and I'm working on, do we rehab it or do we not? And we've backed into the numbers and said, "No. I think we can sell this to, you know, one of the people that we've done a lot of business with." And we end up selling it or got him to commit to purchasing it if we can clean up title, and purchase it for a hundred and...

Together: Eighty-five.

Dave: So $185,000 that's on there. So fantastic, if we fix and flip it, we're probably gonna make, we guesstimated something around 50 or 60. And instead, we said, "Okay, we can wholesale this. And by the time we get done maybe, we make sixty-ish. So let's see if we can wholesale it." There's where the fun part comes in, right? So we've got Adrienne and Richelle over here. They've done everything they can possibly do, right? They contacted the homeowner and they're saying, "Help, Oscar." It gets to Oscar. Oscar says, "Okay. We can do all these. Let's get it done." And now I help Melina. And here's where I really use a word I've recently learned, but here's a reputation capital where it comes into play. And reputation capital, so my wife has a really really great reputation in this business for just being of the utmost integrity, doing exactly what she says she's going to do, never playing games, always fully disclosing, all those things and we've closed so many transactions that the title issue we actually got rejected by...multiple title companies would not look at this.

Melina: Well, they looked at it and wanted to do it but we couldn't get it past upper management or legal.

Dave: Got it. And so, you used who you are to call various people. Make calls all the way up the food chain until somebody said, what?

Melina: Yeah. We came up with a solution. So it was... Yeah, that was exactly it. Based on relationships that I have, we were able to come up with a solution and a way to close the transaction so...

Dave: And what's really important about that, I think and for those people that maybe don't understand, we always close transactions with title insurance.

Melina: Always.

Dave: Yeah. So we don't just sign deeds, and hopefully, we get title policies or pass on potential problems to our end buyers. We wanna take care of those people. And so that was a really big thing that you did, communicating with that end buyer and making sure that that was something that could happen. And then here we are, saying seven months under contract we...

Melina: Yeah. While meanwhile, Oscar did what he does and he negotiated those code enforcement liens from $33,000 down to...

Oscar: $3,000.

Melina: $3,000.

Dave: Wow.

Oscar: Yeah. She was... The owners were gonna make, let's say about somewhere about...between $70,000 and $80,000 had that not been done. And instead there netting like $105,000, $106,000-ish, type thing, right?

Dave: Right. Minus...

Oscar: A lots of ishes going on in this conversation, but...

Melina: You sound so non-committal.

Dave: Well, there's just so many numbers, and it's, you know, what's crazy about this is this deal is really complicated.

Melina: Yup.

Dave: I mean very complicated. So many moving parts. When I said, I couldn't have closed this deal on my own, there's no way, like, we needed your expertise, honey, to get this deal done. And, you know, Adrienne could've found that homeowner all day long, right? And then had no clue how to go from there. And I think that's a really important part of what we have taking place at the club. And so many people, all over the place, all over, you know, gosh, we're down to Southern California, we've got people coming from Arizona, and out of Vegas, and even Idaho now, and Hawaii. People coming all over the place to be able to come together because of the expertise and experience that's happened in the club. And, you know, we couldn't have said that seven years ago, six years ago, that kind of thing.

Melina: Yeah. You know what I was thinking when you were speaking earlier? I was thinking, you know what this is? Like, the idea between networking versus relationship building, I think we have got...this is like... I feel like we're trailblazing in so many different areas. So, you know, in...

Dave: Imagine that.

Melina: Yeah, I know. Seriously, I look Tim, and I look at Oscar and I go, "Yeah, they've blazed the trail for other people's to have, like, intentional relationships as opposed to just, you know, networking, you know, in a random kind of way, but having intentional relationships. An intentional relationship building. We now know what that looks like, and I feel like we've just gotten so good at identifying that. And sometimes, it's counterintuitive to what we believe. For example thinking Oscar and Tim would be a great partnership, I know they're great friends, but that doesn't mean that...it doesn't translate necessarily to a strong business relationship. But I can look now and go, "Oh, my gosh." Now, they have the ability to truly build a team because you have two really strong leaders who are building up other leaders. And that's a unique skill set. Also, that requires a form of humility from both leaders.

Dave: Right. Set aside their egos.

Melina: Yes.

Dave: For purposes of being able to collaborate and do more deals. A really...that's a great point, because if I ask most people, right, "If you can make 100% of the profit," they're gonna say all day long they wanna make a 100% of the profit.

Melina: Sure.

Dave: Right? It's just the default. I mean, if I said, "Do you wanna run your business some day and then you're in charge and a hundred percent of the profit is yours," most people are gonna say yes.

Melina: Not anybody who's been in business.

Dave: Right. True statement though, Tim?

Tim: Absolutely. I was there.

Dave: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, "if I can do that, I can get a hundred percent of the profit. I'm good," and what we've learned is that most of those end up being like onesie-twosie investors. You know, they got one going on, second one in the pipeline kinda thing, but they still got to work on that. And now you guys find yourself where you've got, who knows, countless deals in the pipeline, different things happening. I mean, today as we're leaving the house, you're like, "I have three deals I'm trying to close today," you know.

Melina: Yes.

Dave: And wow, you know. We've closed, you know, two last week and three this week and this is just really awesome and behind every one of those is some student somewhere or some club member, something that... The really powerful part is that, you know, I don't even look forward to us closing the deal, I look forward to the other people getting there, you know, their cut of whatever we did. You know, going back to that Realto deal, you know, it was Adrienne and Richelle, right? So it's those two. We got Oscar and then ultimately, Oscar gets us involved. And then as we line up the funding and get all that done, and the we decided to just split it four ways.

Melina: Yup.

Dave: Right. I mean, four ways. I say four ways, that's really yours, honey. And then, you know...

Oscar: New shoes.

Dave: So... Actually it's, play has nothing to do with this. It's gonna have everything to do with the end of the year and charity and all of the things that she's got going on. But, you know, 15... What was your check? Fifteen...

Oscar: Fifteen-five and some change.

Dave: Fifteen-five and some change. That...

Tim: Fifteen-five-ish

Dave: ish? We'll just use ish over and over. Yeah. So 15,500 for Adrienne, Richelle, Oscar, and then ultimately Melina. So...

Melina: Each.

Dave: Each.

Melina: Yeah. A hot split.

Dave: Yeah. That's not the split. That was the...that was after it was split, so...

Melina: How many people do you think... Like, I was thinking about that as I was watching them get their checks the other day, and I was thinking to myself, "What would somebody have to do to, you know, all year, to earn a check on the side for $15,500?"

Dave: Right.

Melina: Right?

Dave: Right.

Melina: That's more than a thousand dollars a month in a part-time, very very part-time basis. What would you have to do to earn that kind of income?

Dave: Yeah, you know, when you think about...

Melina: It's not easy.

Dave: Adrienne took a year to find the homeowner. It doesn't mean she spent 40 hours a week looking for the homeowner.

Melina: No.

Oscar: And no. Not at all.

Dave: Yeah, I mean, she's...whether she's skip tracing and trying to call relatives, or mailing out a letter, those types of things, so I don't know how many hours.

Melina: Well, she actually shared the... What she would do is at the end of her day, like in the evenings when she would sit down and just, you know, relax, she would have a glass of wine and get on her computer, that's when she would skip trace.

Dave: Really?

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: So it's more like...

Melina: She shared that actually.

Dave: After my day is done...

Melina: Yes.

Oscar: Right.

Dave: ...I'm still looking for that particular homeowner.

Melina: Exactly. Yup.

Dave: Yeah.

Melina: She definitely didn't... Which was perfect, you know, which is exactly what we, you know, what we train what we train people to do.

Oscar: That's exactly what we told her.

Dave: I happen to know that she was filling her pipeline at the same time. Trails, you know, she's got other deals in the pipeline right now and...

Melina: You're in a deal with her.

Dave: I am in a deal...I'm in another deal with her. So, you know, it took her 19 months for that deal, but she's been working her business and she's got multiple other opportunities coming her way right now, so she's gonna find herself in a position where she needs good partnerships here soon as well, I think.

Melina: Yeah, and good tax planning.

Dave: Right?

Oscar: She just, by the way, sent me another e-mail with four other vacancts that she's chasing down. So she's working it.

Melina: Absolutely.

Dave: I think that's great.

Melina: And, you know, what I love about that too, just in terms of the diversity in the club. You know, Adrienne's retired.

Dave: Right. All right. Wow. That's cool.

Tim: I always forget that she's retired.

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Me too.

Melina: Perspective.

Dave: She doesn't work like she is retired.

Melina: No, she doesn't. Yeah, that's exactly right. But just perspective, you know?

Dave: Right. Yeah, very very cool. And, I guess, that's... As we set to kind of wrap this thing up and really if anybody's, we come up on the end of the year and, you know, there's always, "Oh, it's the end of the year so I'm gonna have New Year's resolutions. And I'm gonna have this, I'm gonna have that." And I think if anyone who's listening to this has ever had the mindset of like, "I really wanna get in real estate. At some point, I wanna be able to do this." I think you have gotta plug in wherever you're at. It doesn't matter where you're listening to this. You've gotta find a group of people and I think you should be intentional in looking at certain people. Instead of the vague, kind of, ambiguous, "I'm gonna go network." I'm gonna go network with who? And what are they doing? And do they have a track-record of actually getting deals done? Because I know, you know, we networked before and people would talk a big game, but if you ever actually sat down and said, you know, "Show me what you're doing." Most of them didn't have a real track record, you know. What's worked at our club is that there's a track record of these types of things happening all over the place.

Melina: Yeah, you know what came to me right now is you need quality, not quantity.

Dave: There you go. Yeah. A big thing that we do at the club too. We don't say, come one come all.

Melina: No, we don't.

Dave: Yeah. We're very, picky is kind of the word, but we're not really...

Melina: Intentional.

Dave: Yeah, we're just intentional. And who is it? And...

Tim: Who gets invited?

Dave: Yeah. So with that, I think that's a really good thing. So those of you that that are doing that, you know, I kind of, go through an exercise with brand new students. Like, figure out the characteristics that you're looking for in a partner, right? Because if you wanna grow a business, you're gonna need a partner. You know, we can look at both Tim and Oscar and say they both had this mindset, to begin with of, "I've got this," as Oscar said, "I'm gonna do this my way." And Tim saying, "You know, I'm gonna... I want a hundred percent of this because I'm gonna work on that. And maybe, I'm not even adequate enough to work with Oscar," right? And then it's...once he got past that and realized, "Well, Oscar needs me and I need Oscar," right? And then Oscar and Tim need other people such as Melina or whatever to get deals done.

And then the collaboration, it's not a hundred percent of the profit, clearly, because everybody's, you know, working on different JD's and stuff. But, I mean, how much more can we get done? Like, as we go into the next year and, you know, what does this look like? There's such a massive snowball that's happening right now. Like there's just, you know, it's almost... Like, I said, we take it for granted even how many deals we're closing and how many people inside the club have deals that are closing and, you know, seeing checks handed out. We've become... I don't know, immuned? I don't know what the right word is, but...

Melina: Well, it's just become normal. It's not...

Oscar: Expected.

Melina: Yeah, exactly. Expected. Yeah, it's not, you know, it's not a pipe dream anymore which is very very cool.

Dave: Yeah. A few weeks ago as we were scheduling the field mentoring and we're going out going, "We have so many properties to take our students to" and to look at all these different deals. We had to actually go, "Well, we can't get into that one, we can't get into that one and we can't get into that one, we can't get into that one." I can remember a day when we're like, "Okay, so we have one, and now we have two, and now we have a ton." And so hats off to you guys and just being able to really embrace this and, you know, known you both for a long time. A lot of growth in the both of you and...

Melina: Grateful your leadership. Both of you.

Dave: All around the club, everybody I know listening to this would say the same things, I know you've had a huge influence in a lot of people's lives inside of our club and, you know, this is just perfect. And just what a great way to end the year, and this conversation. And as we move forward, I can't wait to see what you guys do, and we'll have to get you back on here soon and talk about some of the partnerships you've got going on and what the fruit of that labor has been like as well.

Oscar: Yeah. That's exciting stuff.

Dave: Good.

Oscar: Exciting stuff. You know, just real quick, I think for the folks out there listening to this, you were talking about being in... Do things with a purpose, with intent, and it goes for everything we do at the club, right? Every conversation needs to have a purpose behind it. Whether it's because you know it can help somebody up or whatever it is, but just be very purposeful in everything you do and the success will come. And be full of intent, right? Obviously, good intent. But, be full of intent and just go out and do it, I mean, sitting down listening to the podcast is great. If this inspires you, awesome. Get out and do it. Right?

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Podcasts aren't gonna get you to a pay check.

Tim: Right?

Dave: So not a pay-day anywhere, so we hope this has been an encouragement to you and we look forward to this next year. So we'll catch you guys in a few weeks.

Melina: NWAC. Flipping Off, flipping out.

Dave: Flipping something.

Melina: Ish.

Dave: Flip the mic off.

Melina: Ish.

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